The Charms-Portal is a groundbreaking initiative which aims to revolutionise social care, connecting commissioners and providers in a unique, secure way.

For more information about the Portal and to find out how it could help your local authority or organisation, please watch this short video:

Charms Lite allows organisations to upload and share their vacancies free of charge. This availability can be seen by registered users from local authorities around the country looking for placements for children.


To get set up with Charms Lite or to find out more about how it could benefit your organisation, contact portal@socialcarenetwork.com

Welcome to Lotus Foster Care Ltd as the newest agency to join the CHARMS™ community!

We are looking forward to a long and mutually productive relationship and would like to thank you once again for choosing Charms™.

'I have been using CHARMS™ Pay for a few months now and I can honestly say it has made my life so much easier.

With our ever expanding fostering department I was overwhelmed by work until we made the decision to employ CHARMS™ Pay. They have been incredibly helpful providing both training and ongoing support and I look forward to learning all aspects of the system to make life even easier.'

~ Janaya Kelly, Care 4 Children, June 2019

The West London Alliance and Social Care Network Solutions are excited to announce a new shared way of working to improve commissioning processes across the authorities that make up the West London Alliance.

Please click HERE to read the full announcement.

For those agencies who are already part of the CHARMS family, all you need to do is confirm with the West London Alliance that you give consent for this information to be passed to them - please contact wlacontracts@ealing.gov.uk to do so. Any questions should be directed at either wlacontracts@ealing.gov.uk or phil.moses@socialcarenetwork.com

'CHARMS™ Pay is a great, fast and effective way for our agency to pay our carers. Using CHARMS™ Pay has considerably saved time as the system generates the payments from the information you input. As our foster carers are our biggest assets, it is vital that they are paid on time and correctly, using CHARMS™s Pay has enabled us to do this. The system is very easy to use and the customer support is excellent.'

- Bethany Willis, Capstone Foster Care

'As always, I must emphasise what a superb package CHARMS™ Pay is.

Previously I have used excel to pay carers which is a long winded process, with the added difficulty of keeping taps on what respite, expenses etc had been paid.

CHARMS™ Pay is such a joy to use which has been built very logically so that the user moves from task to task seamlessly.

It takes such a weight off the user as it simply does not make mistakes and all the history of each placement is easily accessed to check any detail.'

- Janet Laycock, Capstone Foster Care

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fostering-refugee-children-eleanor-vanner/

A number of agencies that we work with offer placements for refugee children. At SCN we work hard to enable them to keep secure records and to monitor outcomes for all of those children. Having timely access to information enables frontline care staff to address their needs quickly and to provide the most effective support.

'I absolutely love CHARMS Pay, it is so easy to use and is very straightforward.

Admittedly, when I first used it there were little things that I wanted, like I had to log in and out of each agency every time but SCN changed it so it’s just a drop down menu now and saved me heaps of time (I think I was a little too excited when they fixed this!)

I quite often have to preplan my carer payments and CHARMS Pay makes it so easy to do that as you can open a run without any payments and add payments to it or you can run for advance dates. We have three agencies on CHARMS/CHARMS Pay and they all run different dates for holidays/allowance payments but once set up it is so easy and if you need to change anything, it is no hassle at all.

Both the carer payments and invoicing are so easy to run, just by entering from and to dates, it always reminds you of the last run number used and there is a constant audit log of everything done in it.

You can run carer statements and email them directly at any time. If carers are using CHARMS then they can access remittances/statements through CHARMS instead of having to email/post them. It really has made my life easier and I would recommend it to anyone to use, to be completely honest, I cannot recommend it enough.

I find if I have a small gripe about something not working to how I need it to, the SCN Team do their utmost to sort it for me, the service and help is fantastic.'

- Julie Evans, CareTech Community Services

We recently received some fantastic feedback on CHARMS from the Registered Manager of Fostering UK:

‘The CHARMS database is a fantastic tool for all fostering agencies. We have had the system installed from day one, which sets the foundations with regards to data protection, compliance, security and usability of all of the information that one uses when running a fostering agency. From a managers perspective, I cannot fault the system and I can honestly say having CHARMS in place has significantly contributed to our company gaining a ‘Good’ rating from Ofsted in our first inspection. The support provided by the CHARMS support team is second to none and nothing is too much trouble, for my staff and my foster carers. I would highly recommend for any fostering agency to use CHARMS as the main part of their recording and data protection structures and for new fostering agencies, using CHARMS from day one as we have, will help you get the Ofsted rating you require.'

YOU are invited to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Game!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2030-sustainable-development-goals-game-manchester-sdgs-tickets-62134641385

19th of June in Manchester from 6pm to 9pm - this workshop costs £25, or you can purchase a sliding scale ticket for anywhere between £50 and £12.50 depending on your ability to pay (and how much you want to help others).